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From Day To Day 

Essays on Things 
Ordinary 



From Day to Day 

Essays onThings 
Ordinary 

by 

Grace Goodman Mauran 




Ralph Fletcher Seymour 
Publisher Chicago 



$ 






% 



Copyrighted 1918 
Ralph Fletcher Seymour 



JAN -6 I9I9, 



V 



'CU ,'508884 



To the Memory of my Sister 
Daisy Goodman Baldwin 



Contents 

Page 

Introduction 1 

Taking Inventory 3 

Stagnant Ponds 7 

Optical Allusions 11 

Companionship 15 

Curtains 19 

The Dozen Napkins 23 

Memories of Maids 29 

Spring Within Doors 33 

Ghostly Gowns 37 

With the Fish Course 43 

Gardening 47 

On the Sleeping Porch 53 

Sweet Nancies 57 

Dusting Walden Pond 61 

The Bridge 65 

Size Fourteen 69 

In Memoriam 73 

Opera Versus Sunsets 79 

At the Death-Bed of Hens 81 

Autumn Leaves and Daffodils .... 85 

To My Attic 89 



Contents— Continued 



Those Little Court House Bells . . 

Other Library Tables 

Beethoven in the Rain .... 


Page 
. . 93 
. . 97 
. . 101 


The Village House 

Twenty-Five Bouquets .... 
The Great Adventure .... 


. . 105 
. . Ill 
. . 117 



Introduction 



j^HE writing of daily themes is one 
u? of the requirements in the courses 
pjj in English compositions in univer- 

$Mgi sities, and, I believe, in high 
schools and colleges. Within the compass of a 
page, or a paragraph or two, the student is 
requested to express views on any subject that 
may enter his or her head. After dropping 
these "dailies" into a theme box, or handing 
them in to the instructor, these budding authors 
await, with more or less trepidation, the read- 
ing aloud in class of the best, or the worst of 
these bits of composition, and the verdicts of 
fellow-students and teacher. 

At the termination of the course many of 
these theme-writers abandon this form of 
composition with glad alacrity, others carry 
it into the broader fields of journalism, while 
still another class, though not actually con- 
tinuing the habit of composing "dailies," go 
on looking at life from the theme point of view. 

Particularly is this true of a housekeeper, 
with leanings toward literature, who often 
finds relief for her spirits in looking upon her 
various duties and activities from the old 

HI 



theme standpoint. The face of the grocer's 
boy, the hanging of her curtains, the dusting 
of her books, the putting up of fruit, indeed 
all of the small interests and intimacies of 
home life come to be regarded as legitimate 
subjects for themes, and she may either allow 
these "dailies" to evaporate in the thin 
domestic air, or she may continue the practice 
of putting them into written words, and of 
dropping them into a drawer which to her 
fancy becomes a theme box. 

The following collection of "dailies" repre- 
sent such an accumulation. Whether they 
may serve as a warning to universities, or 
merely become a further reproach to the 
"house-bound" woman depends upon the 
verdict of that larger class-room, the public. 



[21 




Taking Inventory 

feiT'S too bad to leave you alone on 
New Year's day," remarks the 
husband of the housekeeper, as he 
reaches for his umbrella in the 
hall, "and on such a beastly day, too, but 
you know I must be at the office, for it's 
the day for taking inventory." 

"Yes," she answered, "it's the day for 
taking inventory," and as the figure of the 
Proprietor disappears in the fog and rain, 
and the housekeeper returns to her seat by 
the open fire, she adds to herself, "and why 
shouldn't a housekeeper take inventory on 
this day, not an inventory of her material 
possessions, but of her intellectual and 
spiritual assets." Yet not being quite clear 
as to what, in commercial terms, is the 
exact meaning of the word 'inventory,' the 
dictionary is brought into requisition. "An 
itemized list of goods with an estimated 
value of their worth;" why, yes, such a 
definition lends itself very readily to the 
higher purposes, but what, in spiritual 
terms, is a housekeeper's 'itemized list of 
goods?' 

[3] 



From Day to Day 

The fire begins to blaze and to throw a 
bright light on the work-basket on the 
floor at one side of it, and on a chair upon 
which lie two half-open books on the other 
side. Why, here are some of the items of a 
housekeeper's inventory: here is the work- 
basket that is a symbol of domesticity, 
books that offer an escape from too much 
domesticity, and the fire that brings the two 
together in a beautiful union. 

And as she mused over these symbolic 
'items' and gazed at the increasing fog out- 
side it seemed to her that a whole company 
of ghostly housekeepers appeared before her 
to demand recognition for their past services. 
They said that in their day a good house- 
keeper had no time for these musings by 
the fire, this nonsense of 'taking inventory;' 
she was too busy with her daily occupations, 
her preservings and cannings, her quiltings 
and soap-makings to find time for such 
frivolities. The old housekeeper, they as- 
sured her, used to work from sun to sun, 
and to be always ready for any kind of 
personal sacrifice, or renunciation, feeling 
fully repaid if only her family grew and 
prospered. 

Presenting each member of this ghostly 
assembly with a spiritual laurel wreath this 

[4] 



Taking Inventory 

housekeeper banished them, and reached 
for one of the half-open books on the chair. 
It was a volume of the essays of Sainte 
Beuve, and was open at that part of the 
chapter on Joubert in which is analyzed 
the great Frenchman's feeling for the cele- 
brated Madame De Beaumont. In writing 
to his beloved friend Joubert says: "to 
live is to think and be conscious of one's 
soul; all the rest, drinking, eating, etc., 
although I do not think lightly of them, are 
merely aids to life, means of carrying it on." 

This Alice-by-the-fire recalled her phan- 
tom companions long enough to assure them 
that their trouble had been that they did 
not think enough, and thus possess their 
souls, and that they had given too much 
time to the material aids to life. The wise 
housekeeper of today, she assured them, 
having known the luxury of possession, 
longs for the luxury of non-possession, hav- 
ing experienced the weariness of being 
served she would know the delights of 
serving, not of serving in a material way, 
but in a spiritual and intellectual sense. 

But the ghostly company had vanished, 
this time of their own accord, and the house- 
keeper reached for the other volume on the 
chair. This was Montaigne's essays and a 

[5] 



From Day to Day 

small handkerchief served as a bookmark in 
the chaper entitled "That to Philosophize 
is to know How to Die." There was a 
pencil mark after these lines: "I would 
always have a man to be doing and as much 
as in him lies to extend and spin out the 
offices of life — and then let death come and 
find me planting my cabbages." 

Well, truly this is quite contrary advice 
to that offered by the other famous French- 
man, and yet both of these statements 
bring grist to the housekeeper's mill. For 
she knows how to mix together two seemingly 
unreconcilable elements, and to produce a 
harmony out of apparently antagonistic 
statements. So she says to herself, 'why of 
course this is a housekeeper's imperative 
duty; to think, no matter how small her 
thoughts may be — and to possess her soul. 
And naturally she should be up and doing, 
no matter how trivial her doings may be 
and thus extend and spin out the offices of 
life — and then let death come and find her 
planting her cabbages, or thinking her small 
thoughts and performing her trivial offices.' 

And so in a vague sort of way this 
dreaming housekeeper felt that she too had 
been "taking inventory." 



[6] 




Stagnant Ponds 

§ggOD forbid," wrote Keats to Fanny 
Brawne, at a moment during that 
tragic courtship when there seem- 
ed to be a promise of a union, and 
a life spent together, "that we should ever 
settle anywhere, become a stagnant pond." 
It is this fear of being what is called "settled 
in life" which has unsettled so many 
artistic natures, and caused them to rebel 
against the domestic yoke. Stevenson 
voiced it in his protest against a life of 
simple ease and domestic routine, and we 
know that the author was true to his con- 
viction and chose to "sit loosely in the 
saddle of life." Yet in his poems Keats 
prescribes, as an ideal pleasure, the sitting 
by the ingle of a winter's night, content to 
allow the fancy to do the roaming, and 
Stevenson's feeling about death is expressed 
in purely domestic terms: "Home is the 
sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter 
is home from the hill." 

Yet when I read these lines of Keats to 
his adored Fanny, I said to myself: 'Yes, 
this is what we all become, we who stick to 

[7] 



From Day to Day 

the fireside, who dread changes, and shrink 
from new surroundings; we become stag- 
nant; both the shallows and the deeps of 
our natures reveal muddiness and frequently 
a little unpleasant slime arises to the top.' 

And then, recalling the manner in which 
many of my favorite authors had lived, it 
seemed to me that each was associated with 
some fixed place. There was Lamb who by 
his own confession died every time he moved, 
and who loved so intensely the "sweet 
charities of home," and Wordsworth who 
was not one to season his life with much 
personal talk, but who loved to sit without 
emotion, hope, or aim in the loved presence 
of his cottage fire, and William Morris 
whose creative impulses seemed to have 
been strengthened by his domestic life. 
George Meredith would not be George 
Meredith without his Box Hill, and as for 
our own New England immortals each one 
seems to have had his own " undisputed 
dwelling place." 

And who has written so feelingly about 
the wistful yearnings towards home as 
Pater whose "Child in the House" we all 
recognize as ourselves, holding fast some 
poignant memory of a cherished home: 
"the little white room with the window 

[8] 



Stagnant Ponds 

across which the heavy blossoms could beat 
so peevishly in the wind, with just that 
particular catch or throb, such a sense of 
teasing in it on gusty mornings — ." And 
he says again in this wonderful analysis of 
a child's mind, that "out of so many possible 
conditions, just this for you and that for 
me brings ever the unmistakable realization 
of the delightful chez soi." 

And so fortified with these illustrious 
examples of home-lovers one is inclined to 
believe that after all it is the rolling stone 
that is more to be dreaded than the stag- 
nant pond, for the former brings greater 
distress both to the stone and its associates. 
And although some people may be inclined 
to regard the housekeeper as a type of un- 
desirably quiet waters she knows of secret 
springs that relieve the seeming stagnation. 
And had Fanny Brawne possessed the true 
domestic instinct her answer to the poet 
would have been: "God forbid that we 
should ever not settle." 



[9] 




Optical Allusions 

AN you see the fine print at the 
top now?" questioned the optician 
in stereotyped accents as he put 
another bit of glass to my eye and 
directed my attention to a series of para- 
graphs printed on a large piece of paste- 
board. I answered with conscious pride 
that I could read even the finest print with 
perfect ease, yet my brain, if not my eyes, 
was confused by the rapid change of glasses 
and I was not quite sure whether the brig 
mentioned in the first line had sailed on the 
sixth or the eighth of August. 

Yet it was really very important, from a 
physical, if not from a historical standpoint 
that I should know the exact date of the 
sailing, but I said to myself that no doubt 
I was as clear about the matter as most of 
the victims condemned to this optical test. 
There were many of these victims seated 
before showcases containing glasses suited 
to every kind of normal or abnormal vision, 
and as I awaited the return of my optician 
who had dived into some mysterious recess, 
in search, I feared, of a still more difficult 

[HI 



From Day to Day 

brig, I watched these seekers after a clearer 
vision. 

Over near the door sat a man whom I at 
once recognized as a popular society beau 
of my party days. He was noted then for 
his polished manner and correct dressing, 
but now he was addressing the optician in 
the querulous tones of an old man, and his 
clothes were shabby almost to the point of 
seediness. Seemingly his one object in life 
was to get those somewhat reddened eyes 
adjusted to the proper glasses, though from 
time to time he stole a glance at a showily 
dressed woman next to him who seemed to 
be waiting for some one. I followed his 
glance, and said to myself that for a place to 
meet old acquaintance and to arouse happy 
memories there is no place like an optician's. 
For years ago, I had a speaking acquaintance 
with this woman, but now we did not know 
each other even "by sight." She had been 
something of a beauty in her day, the soul- 
ful-eyed type, and I wondered how she 
reconciled herself to the hiding of the 
soulfulness behind glasses, and how she 
would get on with that ancient brig that 
sailed in August. "What is it to grow 
old?" I questioned, quoting Matthew Arnold 
under my breath. 

[12] 



Optical Allusions 

Is it to lose the glory of the form, 

The lustre of the eye? 

Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? 

— Yes, but not this alone. 

No, not this alone, I thought, though I 
knew that Arnold and I parted company 
here, for, whereas he goes on to mention 
even worse things than the loss of beauty's 
wreath and the lustre of the eye that comes 
with age, I was discovering something more 
interesting than declining beauty in the 
faded countenances of my ancient beau and 
belle. 

A troop of school children came in to have 
their eyes adjusted to glasses and though 
they seemed to regard the operation with 
quiet matter-of-factness it seemed to me 
that they were more pathetic figures than 
my old friends. Here was the lustre of the 
eye and a few flowers from beauty's wreath, 
but I turned from them to gaze at the 
dimmed eyes of the beau and belle. 

And in spite of his fussiness and seediness 
there was something in those reddened eyes 
that told of battles fought and won, and 
yellow as were the cheeks of the belle the 
soulfulness was still in her eyes, nay it was 
intensified; she had dreamed dreams and 
had visions. And I said to myself, what 

[13] 



From Day to Day 

matters it after all whether the ancient 
brig sailed on the sixth or the eighth, the 
important fact is that ancient brigs can 
sail, and that they are sometimes more re- 
liable than the younger craft. 



[14] 




Companionship 

M thinking of spending the winter 
in Carolina," remarks an ac- 
quaintance, "one of my friends 
who lives there has written, beg- 
ging for a long visit, and I have accepted 
her invitation." 

I marvel over the fact that there is a 
woman in Carolina pining for companion- 
ship and another in Chicago who has the 
courage to face such a relationship. I 
wonder to myself how these two women will 
get on together, what they will do with 
their mornings, and how they will find con- 
versation to spread over the evening hours. 
"You see, she doesn't treat me as a visitor." 
adds my acquaintance, "but simply allows 
me to do as I please while she does as she 
pleases." How delightful, yet I ask myself 
whether what pleases one does not some- 
times displease the other, and whether there 
are not times when one of them is tempted 
to ask the other to do something she is not 
pleased to do, thus putting an end to 
independence, and straining friendship to the 
breaking point. 

[15] 



From Day to Day 

In fancy I seem to see one of these friends 
seated alone in her room at night and thus 
soliloquizing: "What an unpleasant way 
Jane has of looking for the seamy side of 
people's characters, and I do wish she would 
get over that irritating habit of telling the 
same thing over and over." Yet, of course, 
it is quite possible that this woman has the 
knack of seizing the garment of character 
from Jane's hands before it has been turned, 
and of nipping in the bud the twice told 
tale. There are women like this, and it is 
well that they exist for too many of us 
sympathize with the doctor in one of 
Dostoevsky's novels who admitted with 
bitterness that the more he loved humanity 
in general the less he loved man in particu- 
lar. "I have often come to making en- 
thusiastic schemes for the service of 
humanity," he says, "and perhaps I might 
actually have faced crucifixion if it had been 
suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable 
of living in the same room with any one for 
two days together, as I know by experience. 
As soon as any one is near me, his person- 
ality disturbs my self-complacency and 
restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours 
I begin to hate the best of men : one because 
he's too long over his dinner; another 

[16] 



Companionship 

because he has a cold and keeps on blowing 
his nose. I become hostile to people the 
moment they come too close to me — ." 

Of course this gentleman's feelings to- 
wards man was pathological, as are most of 
the emotions expressed by the characters 
created by the great Russian, but such 
feelings often find a response in the breast 
of a housekeeper who by virtue of her 
solitude grows supersensitive and over 
fastidious. Dwelling so much alone, she 
comes to have some of the same feeling 
about her fellow creatures as Dostoevsky's 
doctor expressed, or she writes to Jane and 
begs for a prolonged visit. 

Yet the hermit housekeeper has been 
known to discover a piquant charm in her 
bits of intercourse with the tradespeople 
who come to her door, some of whom offer 
observations that are like their wares; 
neatly put up in packages and ready for 
use, while those irregular ringers of door 
bells, the photographer who promises beau- 
ty, the seller of matches just out of the 
hospital, and the lady of fallen fortunes and 
evil toilet preparations frequently bring 
glimpses of another, and less stereotyped 
world that are a stimulus to a fireside spirit. 

[17] 



From Day to Day 

'She's a sociable soul,' we sometimes say 
of the woman who would always have some 
one with her and who hardly ventures on a 
trip to town without a companion, but one 
questions whether the most sociable of all 
souls are not those who are content to be 
the friend of their friend's thought, who 
hold imaginary conversations with prized 
companions, and keep close to them only 
in spirit. In the words of the poet: 
When each the other shall avoid, 
Shall each by each be most enjoyed." 



[18] 




Curtains 

SOMETIMES think that a house- 
keeper is known by her hangings, 
and that it is quite possible to 
determine her character and tem- 
perament by the self revealing curtains that 
are hung in her windows. The geologist, 
or botanist traveling through an unfamiliar 
country discovers an interest in the land- 
scape unknown to the mere pleasure seeking 
traveler; to them the earth and flowers have 
a special significance, and a particular 
message. Just so with the housekeeper 
whose promenades through the streets are 
touched with a kind of piquancy and interest 
because of her knowledge of the psychology 
of window draperies. There is a curtain 
stiff, elaborate lace curtain that always 
suggests rigidity and conventionality, and 
you say to yourself: " Behind these reside 
those bestial goddesses of comfort and 
respectability that Stevenson so despised, 
and then you go on to some soft, graceful 
unobtrusive draperies that call up visions 
of artistic souls within, and make you want 
to steal by some evening when the lights 

[19] 



From Day to Day 

are lit and confirm your bit of window 
psychology. 

Of course, sometimes you are mistaken; 
very agreeable people have been known to 
hide behind very ugly draperies, and souls 
without artistic impulses are found back of 
the soft graceful hangings. But as a rule 
it may be said that a housekeeper stands, 
or rather hangs revealed in her windows, and 
it is her knowledge of this fact that some- 
times compels her to discard a bit of drapery 
long before it is worn out, but which is no 
longer true to her present standard of taste. 
And new curtains sometimes serve to gratify 
her love of change, while freshly laundried 
ones seem to impart a purity to her spirit 
that no one but a housekeeper can under- 
stand. 

The curtain has been an important 
feature in literature. Heroines have been 
concealed behind them, secrets have been 
revealed through their means, and humilia- 
tion has been glad to use them as a screen. 
"You raise that curtain, my lord," ex- 
claimed the irate brother of a neglected 
wife, in Meredith's 'Amazing Marriage' to 
the repentant husband was was vainly 
seeing a cause for reconciliation in his 

[20] 



Curtains 

paternity, "and all three realized that the 
curtain would not bear shaking." 

"The silken, sad uncertain rustle of each 
purple curtain" struck terror to the lover 
of Lenore in Poe's Raven, while in Dos- 
toevsky's 'Poor Folk' it is made to serve 
as a medium of communication between the 
aged hero and his youthful love across the 
way. 

And who can forget that memorable 
scene in 'Persuasion' where Lady Russel 
and the heroine, Anne Elliot, are taking a 
drive and have just passed by the estranged, 
but still adored lover of Anne. Lady Russel 
turns her head to look, and Anne, believing 
that it is her lover at whom her friend 
gazes, is all of a tremble. "You will 
wonder," said the older lady, "what has 
been fixing my eye so long; but I was look- 
ing after some window-curtains which Lady 
Alicia and Mrs. Frankland were telling me 
of last night. They described the drawing- 
room window-curtains of one of the houses 
on this side of the street and this part of the 
town as being the handsomest hung of any 
in Bath — ." After a housekeeper has 
arrived at a certain stage in her career it is 
window curtains rather than discarded 

[21] 



From Day to Day 

lovers that most attract her, and that most 
repay her interest. 



[22] 




The Dozen Napkins 

INE'S friends sometimes seem most 
interesting by virtue of the con- 
trary traits in their natures, and 
because they are so delightfully 
ill-suited to their present way of living. 
There's Phebe for instance, an urban spirit 
in a suburban setting, one who despises 
domestic ways but is frequently caught in 
the most domestic of poses. It was always 
a comfort, she admitted, to know that there 
was a dozen napkins in her basket awaiting 
hemming. Not that she loved to sew, 
Heaven forbid ! One of the most irritating 
of spectacles was a company of women with 
work-bags, forming what is called a "thim- 
ble party." "A thimbleful of ideas," she 
would say to herself, with scorn, "their 
spools are wound with the threads of gossip, 
and their needles are mere points of personal 
criticism." 

And yet such was the contrariness of her 
nature, and never were there so many 
conflicting traits gathered into one woman's 
soul that she sometimes invited the com- 
panionship of her own thimble and thread 

[23] 



From Day to Day 

and needle. And at such times, I fancy, that 
she proudly thought that no thimble could 
hold the ideas teeming in her ample brain, 
that her spools were wound with threads of 
colors not to be found in other lives, and 
that all of her needles had golden eyes. 

At any rate I know that she seldom failed 
to attend a January linen sale and procure 
at least one dozen napkins for hemming. 
There was something about the act of 
turning a hem, and of stitching it in a fixed 
place that brought peace to her mind, and 
the sight of the dozen napkins awaiting 
her impatient fingers calmed her nerves. 

And she was in sore need of peace and 
calm though her outward lot was one that 
many women would have envied. But she 
was a woman of undeveloped talents who 
longed for a career, for the artist's life of 
freedom, and instead, she was chained to 
the stake of domesticity and compelled to 
satisfy her craving for expression in the 
management of the home routine, the 
Monday washings, Wednesday cleanings, 
and Saturday bakings. If she so much as 
sat down by the fire for a moment's com- 
munion with her soul the cook would put 
her head in the room and demand to know 

[24] 



The Dozen Napkins 

whether she wanted the potatoes fried or 
mashed. 

"Oh, mash them," she would say irritably 
and her soul seemed to have joined the 
potatoes for she could dream no more. 
And then she would seize one of the napkins 
and the mere mechanical act of hemming 
would bring acceptance of the narrow 
domestic life that had goaded her. 

And adventures, too, came with the 
hemming, for one Thursday when the cook 
was out and she sat alone on the porch, that 
is alone save for the presence of the napkin, 
the thimble, thread and needle, a woman 
from across the track came, bringing one of 
the fruits of her own hours of silent work. 
It was a bit of fine edging that she had 
crocheted herself and that would look well 
on the underwear of a fine lady. She was 
trying to help her husband pay for their 
home, she said, and there would be no 
happier woman in this world when once 
she was assured that the house was theirs, 
and that a roof was secured for their seven 
children. It was the oldest of stories, but 
somehow it stirred the emotions of the dis- 
contented sewer who went back to her 
napkin with humility in her heart. 

[25] 



From Day to Day 

And while the Ninth napkin was under 
the needle, and on another Thursday after- 
noon came an artist to the door to ask the 
way to the house of a friend. They fell 
into conversation, and he assured her that 
she was an enviable woman to live in the 
midst of such paintable scenes, and that if 
in the words of the poet, there were dreams 
to sell and the crier rang the bell, he would 
answer as did this poet: "a cottage lone and 
still with bowers nigh," such as this was. 
At first his words aroused the old rebellion, 
and she was ready to tear the ninth napkin 
to bits, but she reflected upon the words of 
the artist, after he was gone, and wondered 
if she had not been blind to the beauty 
about her and dead to the opportunities 
of her own life. 

And when she had finished the dozen 
napkins a sense of satisfaction in something 
achieved, in a duty accomplished, filled her 
soul. She had added something to the com- 
pleted things of this world and the most 
fastidious housekeeper was welcome to 
examine her work. "I've finished the 
whole dozen," she proudly remarked to the 
cook as she carefully placed the little pile 
of napkins in a drawer. 

[26] 



The Dozen Napkins 

"It's a good thing," replied the cook, 
"you needed them." 

And remembering the thimbleful of wise 
thoughts that they had brought her, she 
answered meekly, "yes, I needed them." 



127| 




Memories of Maids 

ILL the hereafter of a housekeeper 
be visited, I wonder, by an army 
of discharged house-maids with 
whom she has lived for a time in 
proud isolation, and from whom she too 
often parted in vexation of spirit? Will 
this ghostly company demand retribution 
for what they considered unfair discharges, 
and will they be permitted to speak their 
minds in a way not countenanced in well- 
regulated earthly habitations? 

When I recall these maids who for brief 
periods dwelt so near to me, as far as bodily 
presence was concerned, I feel that it is 
true, as Thoreau says, that no exertion of 
the legs will bring you near to people, and 
that what Lamb has called the Great God 
Propinquity failed in too many of my own 
cases to bring about the desired conse- 
quences. 

Alas! I seem to recall these flitting 
figures by their faults rather than by 
their virtues, and I fancy that most of 
them preserve the same unfortunate atti- 
tude towards myself. Hardly one do I 

[29] 



From Day to Day 

recall whose departure was not a signal for 
rejoicing, and I particularly remember a 
fleshy Flemish blonde with a passion for 
wearing green feathers who filled my soul 
with positive bliss when she was at last 
persuaded that a separation w r ould be for 
our mutual good, and I saw the last of the 
green feathers disappear around the corner. 

It takes but little effort to cause this 
dismal army to flash upon the inward eye. 
There was Leona, that curious creature who 
could never be brought to sleep in a bed, 
and Ida who was with great difficulty per- 
suaded to leave hers. I recall with anguish 
Hester's habit of humming, and Irma's 
penchant for Jap rose perfume. And then 
there was a period when the Jap rose would 
have been welcome to mitigate the odor of 
carbolic that Cora had always with her, and 
with which she warded off any possible 
contagion. And there was Tilda who never 
went out without leaving doubts as to 
whether she would ever return, and Sophie 
who cared not to go out at all, but spent 
her holidays in her room doing fancy work 
with a zest never given to the plainer tasks, 
and eating loaf sugar with a like ardor. 

And I recall Christina who was forever 
holding up a former mistress as a person for 

[30] 



Memories of Maids 

me to imitate, and Elberta whose cod-fish 
balls were of a quality that made us willing 
to endure an evil temper in their maker. 
Hetty had what I considered a commend- 
able habit of breaking cut glass, but the 
way in which she made up for these 
accidents by the purchase of substitutes in 
imitation was not so praiseworthy. And it 
was Hetty, I think, or was it Lena, who 
never dusted the bust of Emerson, in our 
library, without pausing to exclaim over 
the wonderful likeness between the Concord 
sage and her Swedish uncle? 

If marriage is a lottery, domestic service 
is still more of a one, both for mistress and 
maid. "Hulda is an honest girl, has lived 
in my home eleven months and has given 
perfect satisfaction during that time," reads 
the reference of Mrs. Black, but who knows 
what Mrs. Black's standard of excellence is, 
or what constitutes her notion of satisfac- 
tion. And, of course, poor Hulda will find 
that Mrs. White's manner of housekeeping 
differs greatly from Mrs. Black's, and she 
may grow discouraged in an effort to adjust 
herself to a shifting standard of excellence. 

Yes, the maid-of-all work seems to be 
part of a vanished domestic regime, and I 
fancy that the hereafter of the housekeeper 

[31] 



From Day to Day 

of the future will not be visited by a ghostly 
army of discharged helpers, or by any 
misgivings as to fairness of her treatment of 
these lost presences. But when my domes- 
tic accusers arise before me in some future 
state and demand to know whether, after 
all, I wasn't unjust and too exacting, 
whether they hadn't a right to live their 
own lives and have their own beaux — 
didn't I live my life and have my own 
beaux? I will hang my head and, as a 
punishment, say to each one: "Yes, I was 
wrong and you were right, and won't you 
please come back to me?" 



[32] 




Spring Within Doors 

THOUGHTFUL housekeeper, 
one who realizes that a home 
should not only reflect the spirit 
of its inmates, but be, besides, in 
harmony with the season of the year, is 
unwilling that spring should be wholly an 
out-of-door affair, and that while nature is 
busily stirring without, all is torpid and 
stagnant within. She desires an indoor 
equivalent for this activity in the green 
world, and although the sap in the wood of 
her furniture is successfully glued against 
"budding at the prime" she knows of 
subtle ways of imparting a spring-like 
freshness to her possessions. 

Of course, furnishings cannot be renewed 
as can the flowers, more's the pity, and 
seedy draperies and dead ornaments do not 
fall to the ground as do withered blossoms 
and dead leaves, more's the pity for that 
too, but there are secret methods of im- 
parting bloom to old possessions, and those 
seemingly prosaic agencies, soap and water, 
have really magical powers. 

[33] 



From Day to Day 

Yet this indoor awakening is not wholly 
an affair of soap and water, nor can it be 
defined by that commonplace term, 'house- 
cleaning;' it would be more correct to call 
it a domestic renaissance, for it answers 
Peter's interpretation of the word 'ren- 
aissance,' as "a more liberal and comely 
way of conceiving life." This new con- 
ception arises in the brain of a housekeeper 
after she has made a survey of her be- 
longings, with an eye to possible eliminations 
and readjustments, and she feels that by 
means of certain changes and alterations it 
is within her power to 

— bring thee, all together, 

All delights of summer weather." 

And so a sensitive guest who visits a 
home thus treated will not have his, or her 
nerves painfully jarred by a sudden trans- 
ition from dandelions to plush draperies, or 
be reduced to an unpleasant effort to 
reconcile the lilacs without to the art 
leathers within. Not that this wise house- 
keeper would have no distinction between 
indoors and outdoors, no shut-in coziness 
and shut-out spring frostiness, but she 
desires that there should be some kind of 
unity and harmony between the forces 
without and those within, and it is her 

[34] 



Spring Within Doors 

ambition to make it possible for the inmates 
of her home to be conscious of this unity 
and harmony. 

And it is curious what a natural affinity 
there sometimes seems to exist between 
impersonal outofdoorness and personal in- 
doorness, and how closed-in possessions will 
reflect the meteorological conditions with- 
out. Books, particularly, have a way of 
putting out fresh green sprouts in the 
springtime, and of revealing other indica- 
tions of the fact that the people imprisoned 
within their pages are about to enjoy a 
happy release. On certain stormy days 
gentle-folks from Jane Austen's pages des- 
cend from their shelves and demand recog- 
nition, and again when a mild spring rain 
is falling such stormy characters as the 
mad lovers in 'Wuthering Heights,' or 
some of Dostoevsky's hysterical heroes 
come forth to answer one's need for an 
indoor counteracting violence. 

And on the days when the weather 
without is so wild as to bring about that 
'tumultuous privacy' of which the poets 
have written, not only the books but all 
the indoor possessions seem to reveal that 
"subtlety of operation" that places them 
among the things of the imagination. And 

[35] 



From Day to Day 

it is the ability to perceive these subtle- 
ties, and to comprehend such phases of 
domestic psychology that gives to the 
sensitive housekeeper her keenest joys, and 
permit her to work, in harmony, as it were, 
with nature. 



[36] 




Ghostly Gowns 

^rTin^HIS afternoon Patricia and I 
strolled down Michigan Boule- 
vard together, and at the end of 
a two-mile walk we agreed that 
rarely had we enjoyed a more interesting 
experience. For we had not only delved 
into the delights and adventures of our 
pasts, but we had, besides, gained some im- 
portant data on the psychology of dress. 

Psychology is Patricia's specialty; she 
teaches it in a girl's school, but when not so 
engaged, when she turns her back on the 
sciences, and her face to the superficialities 
I know of no one who can be more charm- 
ingly gay and flippant than my friend, 
Patricia. And today the superficialities 
that she faced were some beautiful window- 
ed gowns and hats about which she chatted 
with the ardor of a school girl. 

"Would you believe it," she said, as we 
stood before a milliner's window, "my 
spring hat is just a mass of yellow roses, 
and yet when I bought it I was terribly 
in the dumps, for we had just received news 
that brother Roy had been slightly wounded 

[37] 



From Day to Day 

in action. Can you fancy buying yellow 
roses under such conditions?" 

"Yes," I answered, "it is one of woman's 
compensations, to put roses on her head 
when she cannot have them in her heart. 
Hats have always acted as a kind of drug 
for us." 

"Ah, there's a dress that would just suit 
you," declared Patricia, directing my atten- 
tion to a plain stone-gray poplin that 
adorned the mature figure of a waxen lady 
in our next shop window, but my eyes were 
fixed upon quite another sort of costume; 
a pale blue bodice above a gauzy white 
skirt. I was standing in my old bed-room 
at home arrayed in this same gown, and 
while patient maternal fingers were fumb- 
ling with the laces of this bodice I was saying 
in irritated tones: "Hurry, hurry, we shall 
be too late for the grand march, and the 
smilax on my gown is wilted already — ." 

"Do you suppose I could wear that shade 
of green?" demanded the voice of Patricia, 
and I saw that she was gazing in rapture 
upon a somewhat fussy gown of gray-green 
chiffon. "Is it too youthful, do you think?" 
Secretly, I thought this dress much too 
youthful for Patricia, but I knew that she, 
like myself, was choosing garments for 

[38] 



Ghostly Gowns 

the figure of her youth, and so I replied: 
"It was made for you." 

But just then Patricia nudged my elbow, 
and directed my attention to a well- 
dressed young man who was standing in 
wide-eyed admiration before a beautiful 
waxen blonde, arrayed in a shimmering 
gown of lavender tulle covered with opal 
beads. 

"If a cat may look at a king, a dog of a 
man may glance at these queenly beauties," 
whispered Patricia, "and isn't it nice that 
he may be allowed to take his full of all this 
loveliness, and stare as long as he pleases at 
the beautiful blonde. He knows that her 
sweet, waxen smile will never relax and that 
she will not turn her head in haughty 
scorn at his impertinence." 

"Perhaps he is only a commercial buyer," 
I suggested, but Patricia said I had no 
imagination, "or it is possible," I went on, 
"that, like us, he is visited by some vision of 
the past, and the lovely blonde serves only 
to recall a flesh and blood beauty whom he 
once adored." 

We left the young man still gazing at his 
charmer, and passed on to the next window. 
Here a marvel of simplicity in the form of a 

[39] 



From Day to Day- 
white net gown belted in at the waist with 
a satin sash caught our fancies, and aroused 
again our sentimental musings. 

* 'White is always lovely," I tritely re- 
marked. 

"Yes," answered Patricia, "it's the only 
color, or lack of color, that suits every 
occasion; we are christened in white, gradu- 
ate in it, are married and buried in it. And 
speaking of graduation I can see myself 
as plainly as I see this figure in white net, 
standing on the platform in Room One of 
the old Douglas school, dressed in a fluffy 
white muslin and assuring a restless audi- 
ence that 'fiction has existed to a greater 
or less extent since the earliest history we 
have of mankind, but it probably received 
its greatest impetus during the crusades 
when—.' " 

"There's that same young man again," 
I interrupted. 

"I suppose he has forgotten all about the 
Lady of the Opal Beads" whispered Pat- 
ricia, "and is losing his heart, in true man- 
fashion, to our sweet girl graduate. I won- 
der if he don't wish he might own one of 
these waxen ladies to take about with him, 
like that girl in the story who dressed up a 

[40] 



Ghostly Gowns 

wire frame in a man's mackintosh and pro- 
vided herself with a suitable escort.' ' 

"How foolish you are Patricia, and how 
foolish most of us women are when it comes 
to the subject of clothes." 

"Wasn't it Emerson, or was it some 
woman friend of his who said — " 

"That the consciousness of being well- 
dressed gave a woman a greater satisfaction 
than that bestowed by religion," I con- 
tinued, "Gracious Patricia! you might have 
spared me that hackneyed quotation." 

"But it's true nevertheless," declared my 
friend. "Men don't understand a woman's 
attitude towards her clothes; they think it 
purely a question of vanity and love of dis- 
play, whereas it is her method of self ex- 
pression, just as her home is. Do you 
remember that heroine in Hardy's 'Mayor 
of Casterbridge' who hesitated so long in 
her choice of two gowns because she knew 
that she would be entirely a different 
creature in one from what she would be 
in the other. We like our clothes to re- 
flect our spirits, to be true to our innermost 
being." 

"As if we were ever true to our innermost 
being, either in clothes or conversation." 

[41] 



From Day to Day 

"You are getting tired," declared Patricia 
"let's stop in this candy shop and satisfy our 
innermost being with a cup of chocolate. 
We really have taken a longer walk than we 
realize." 

"Yes," I replied, "we have walked back 
into our pasts and this is always a weari- 
some performance." 

"But I should like to know," declared 
Patricia, the psychologist, ' 'something of the 
past of that young man, and his present 
thoughts on the subject of woman's 
clothes." 



142] 




With The Fish Course 

HE connection between fried fish 
on our dining table and a ship 
that sailed in 'forty nine' around 
Cape Horn on its way to the 
California gold fields does not, at first 
thought, seem very close, but that is be- 
cause one reckons without the host. He 
supplies the connection. For while serving 
guests at his table this host no sooner feels 
the touch of the fish under his knife, when 
straightway fancy is off for the Gold Fields, 
and he is saying to his guests: 

"I hope you like fish as well as I do; I'm 
extravagantly fond of all kinds of sea food, 
and I come naturally by the taste, for you 
see my grandfather was a sea captain, and 
during the gold fever he commanded a ves- 
sel that sailed around Cape Horn for Cali- 
fornia, and took seven months for the 
voyage. The captain's son, my father, 
sailed with him, and he kept a diary of the 
events of the trip. By the way, Phyllis, 
where is that diary." 

And Phyllis, the hostess, who has vainly 
been seeking the eye of the host for personal 

[43] 



From Day to Day 

communication, and who has sailed around 
Cape Horn about a hundred times before, 
answers pleasantly: 

"Oh, it's in the book-case, and after din- 
ner I'll bring it out." 

But the host thinks that one or two se- 
lections from this prized record would be 
a delightful appetizer, and a Polite Guest 
echoes this opinion. So instead of eating 
Lake Michigan white fish at a cozy little din- 
ner party, the company at table is dragged 
around Cape Horn in the society of the 
father and grandfather of the host. Says 
the latter: "just listen to this bit": 

January 29th. Fish, beef soup, and 
green peas for dinner and the steerage pas- 
sengers were allowed butter and cheese for 
their meal, which seems to have reconciled 
them to their fates and satisfied their 
hunger, though they appear to have appe- 
tites of animals. 

"How interesting," murmurs the Polite 
Guest, and the others gaze sadly at the pile 
of empty plates before the host, and sym- 
pathize with the steerage passengers. 

January 30th. The steerage passengers 
are grumbling over burnt bean soup. Got 
up the stove and we shall now have things 

[44] 



With The Fish Course 

in better shape. Hope to see canary birds 
off Canary Islands, and they will make us 
think, not of the islands, but of home. 

"How touching," remarks the Polite 
Guest, and the other guests think how grate- 
ful they would be even for burnt soup. 

'February 2nd. This is Washington's 
birthday, and we celebrated with a fine 
rainbow and a dinner of salt junk and Indian 
pudding.' "Will there ever be any pudding 
for us?" wonder the guests. 

'March 11th. All busy getting ready 
for the great Cape Horn. Passengers now 
lively and a little homesick. Two months 
since we left Boston and we are now 6000 
miles from home. Passengers are feeding 
the sharks.' 

But at the word 'feeding' the hostess 
starts. "Are we never to have our fish? 
I'm sure it must be stone cold." 

"But we haven't reached the Horn yet," 
says the Polite Guest, and the other guests 
look as if they would prefer to reach the 
white fish on the table. 

"You see," apologizes the hostess, "these 
ambitious ancestors of Paul's always sit at 
our table whenever there is a fish course, 
and though they rather hinder the dinner 

[45] 



From Day to Day 

I have come to the conclusion that this is 
a very nice way for Paul to honor the 
memory of our two sailors." 

And the guests politely echo her conclu- 
sion, but what they said afterwards is 
recorded only in their own diaries. 



146] 




Gardening 

IASNT it Adela Chart, the heroine 
of Henry James' delightful story, 
'The Marriages/ and the lady 
famous for having made so deep 
an impression on Stevenson's 'elderly heart', 
who looked forward to an old age spent in a 
garden, on her knees, with her gloves and 
scissors and steeped in the comfort of being 
thought mad? Gardening is assuredly a 
dignified and satisfying resource for old age, 
but devotion to this pursuit is not to be 
regarded as a sign of madness, for on the 
contrary it seems to be one of the safest 
of the roads that lead to sanity. 

For if anything will take the taint of 
sickness from the brain, and the irritating 
kinks from the nerves it is the digging and 
fussing about in a garden. "Glut your 
sorrow on a morning rose, or on the wealth 
of globed peonies," wrote Keats, who 
probably knew no more of the subtle 
delights of a garden than was to be ob- 
tained by the mere act of gazing at the rose 
and the peony. But when you are inter- 
ested in the actual cultivation of these 

[47] 



From Day to Day 

flowers, when you become a partner in their 
efforts to develop, and to free themselves 
from their enemies, then their beauty per- 
meates still further into your being, and you 
may indeed glut your sorrows on their per- 
fections. 

Yet some people confess to a distaste for 
this noble pursuit, find no fascination in the 
hoe and trowel, and are bored by conversa- 
tions of a flowery or seedy character. And 
of course it is useless for these persons to try 
and become gardeners, their interests lie in 
other directions and they should be allowed 
to follow the flowerless paths. For the love 
of gardening seems to be a matter of 
inheritance or temperament, you either love 
to dig or you don't, and those of us who 
love to dig are sorry for those who don't. 

A garden may be as personal and indiv- 
idual as a home. It may be as imitative 
and characterless as a modern colonial 
drawing room, or as expressive and alluring 
as the most charming of living rooms. It 
may have its floral equivalents for mahog- 
any furniture, rose hangings and white 
wood-work, or it may be as full of subtle 
touches, of intimate personal revelations 
as a library or bedroom. 

[48] 



Gardening 

At the beginning of one's career as a 
gardener the temptation is to plant any- 
thing that is suggested, either by pro- 
fessional or amateur, and to accept all 
horticultural advice without question, but 
after a time you become conscious of a 
strong affection for certain flowers and of 
indifference to others. Perhaps those for 
whom you have formed a friendship grew 
in the gardens of your youth, or are asso- 
ciated with certain episodes in your life, and 
since there is not room in your garden for 
all flowers, why naturally those that you 
love are given the preference. And thus 
the garden becomes a part of you, the finer 
part, and you discover that to live among 
these, your floral affinities, is to bring joy 
and peace to your soul. 

Of course, .there is the garden egotist who 
is about the most tiresome egotist in the 
world. He talks of "my fox-gloves" and 
"my marigolds" in a way that makes you feel 
that fox-gloves and marigolds were created 
for him alone, and when you walk about 
in his garden, and listen to his horticultural 
chatter you are conscious of a strange aloof- 
ness from his flowers and you long to get 
out among the wild plants that call no 
man master. Naturally, one has a right to 

[49] 



From Day to Day 

feel pride in one's achievements in garden- 
ing, a pride that has been dearly won in 
the hours of quiet, uncelebrated digging, 
but the lesson of the flowers is humility, and 
it is not a well cultivated garden that 
brings forth a crop of weedy boastfulness. 

If you happen to be a book-lover, as well 
as a gardener, you will be sure to find a 
quotation at the heart of every flower that 
blooms in your garden, and there will be, 
besides, sermons in the seeds, books in the 
climbing vines, but not good in everything. 
For high tragedy stalks about in the garden 
when the rabbits eat up the tulip bulbs, 
when the birds fly away with the berries 
and storms lay low the proud plumes of the 
corn. But nature has many compensa- 
tions, and one gains a riper philosophy from 
these adversities. 

But of course, it is a harrowing experience 
to show off one's garden to one who knows 
flowers only as they have bloomed in 
literature, and whose speech is adorned 
with the blossoms of rhetoric and quota- 
tion. Such a flower-lover sees not your 
daffodils but those which flashed upon 
Wordsworth's inward eye; your English 
daisies recall the "wee, modest, crimson- 
tipped flower" that fell under the plow of 

[50] 



Gardening 

Burns and your foxglove reminds him of 
the fact that Maeterlinck called these 
blossoms melancholy sky-rockets. And so 
he runs on, while your flowers blush unseen 
to his actual vision and you grow weary of 
the blossoms of literature. 

And then there is the unintelligent lover 
of flowers, one who don't know a buttercup 
from a canterbury bell, who demands the 
name of all and remembers none, who has 
always adored flowers but who would never 
think of becoming intimate with them. He 
is not so bad as the egotist or the quoter, 
but what a relief when they have all winded 
their weary ways, and have left you alone 
with your garden, your gloves and scissors, 
steeped in the comfort, not of being thought 
mad, but of being regarded as a somewhat 
unbalanced lover of gardens and gardening. 



[51] 




On The Sleeping Porch 

fPSDlB^^ sleeping out of doors makes of 
x going to bed an eagerly antici- 
pated nightly adventure, and of 
awakening a delightful dramatic 
experience. Insomnia is robbed of half its 
terrors when the stars are willing to bear 
one company through the wakeful hours, 
and it almost seems ill-mannered to turn 
one's back on them to seek a dull oblivion. 
Yet, as Hardy has somewhere pointed out, 
the pleasures of the imagination do not 
atone for wakefulness, and even though the 
stars teach the lesson of humility and assure 
one that the sleeping or waking of one 
porched individual matters but little to the 
world at large, still it matters a great deal 
to the individual, who goes to bed for the 
purpose of sleeping, and who insists upon 
the presence of the balmy restorer. 

During the romantic years one restless 
sleeper fortified herself against insomnia by 
learning by heart the odes of Keats so that 
even now during the wakeful hours that 
are the product of the philosophic years she 
can still remark to the friendly orbs: 

[53] 



From Day to Day 

"Bright star! would I were steadfast as 
thou art," but before reaching the "lone 
splendor" she is in the midst of the "season 
of mists and mellow fruitfulness," and then 
jumps directly from 'Autumn' to a "drear- 
nighted December," assuring the trees just 
outside the porch that "the North cannot 
undo them with its sleepy whistle through 
them, nor frozen thawings glue them" — 
but it is impossible to continue along these 
lines and now she is announcing to the 
nightingale that "my heart aches, and a 
drowsy numbness pains my sense as though 
of hemlock I had drunk." What is hem- 
lock, and would it really cure this horrid 
wakefulness, or is there any other dull 
opiate that could be guaranteed to send 
one 'Lethe-wards?' But why should that 
Grecian Urn now intrude itself upon one's 
thoughts, bringing with it its 'maidens 
loath,' its 'pipes and timbrels,' its 'fair 
youths beneath the trees.' 

The nightingale has come to the front 
again, and is being assured that: I am half 
in love with easeful death and should like 
to 'cease upon the midnight with no pain.' 
Yes, why make such a fuss about death 
when, at the worst, it is but a prolonged 
sleep, and sleep is so precious. 

[54] 



On The Sleeping Porch 

But the nightingale has flown, the Grecian 
Urn with its youths and maidens have faded 
and she is back among the stars, again 
repeating: 'Bright star! would I were 
steadfast as thou art;' just what did 
Keats mean by 'steadfast' and how does 
that line about the sleepless Eremite go? 
What in the world is a sleepless Eremite? 
Is she one? 'Yet still steadfast, still un- 
changeable — why how loud those birds 
sing, it must be time to get up." 



155] 




Sweet Nancies 

HAT is this little flower," ques- 
tioned a famous musician who 
had strayed into my garden on 
his way to a morning rehearsal 
in a nearby summer garden. During the 
summer a flock of musicians take posses- 
sion of our woods, and while strolling about 
one is quite as liable to be greeted by the 
notes of a violin as those of a vireo. 

"Why, that's a sweet nancy," was my 
answer, "and one of the most old-fashioned 
of flowers; didn't they grow in the garden 
of your childhood?" 

"I didn't have any garden in my child- 
hood," he replied quietly, "for you see I 
was raised in a tenement house." 

"And yet your music always suggests 
flowers, and birds, and the free air." 

"And earthiness?" he questioned. 

"No, the earthiness belongs to the days 
of your struggles, now your art is concerned 
only with the fruits and blossoms." 

"But I had to dig," he went on, smiling, 
"harder than ever you have dug in this 
garden." 

[57] 



From Day to Day 

"But to how much greater a purpose; 
you have become an interpreter of Bach, 
while I have produced only buttercups and 
sweet nancies. But do you know," I went 
on, "sometimes I think it would be better 
for your art if you were still living in the 
tenement house." 

"Thank you," he laughed, as he slipped 
into a swinging seat near the nancies, 
brushing aside a few books and seed pack- 
ages to make room for himself, "and are 
not artists to be permitted any of the com- 
forts of life?" 

"You make me think of a story in one 
of these books that I am rereading for 
about the seventh time, just wait till I 
find the place and I'll read you a bit. The 
story is by Henry James and is called the 
"Lesson of the Master," and the lesson 
that the master, a literary genius, teaches 
to the younger aspirant to fame is to the 
effect that the latter must dispense with 
such false idols as a wife and establishment. 
Listen to this: 

'Isn't the artist a man?' questions the 
younger genius. 

'Sometimes I really think not,' replies the 
Master, 'y° u know as well as I what he has 
to do; the concentration, the finish, the 

[58] 



Sweet Nancies 

independence he must strive for, from the 
moment that he begins to respect his work. 
Ah, my young friend, his relation to women, 
especially in matrimony is at the mercy of 
this damning fact — that whereas he can in 
the nature of things have but one standard, 
they have about fifty. Fancy an artist 
with a plurality of standards. To do it 
and make it divine is the only thing he 
has to think about.' 

"And did the pupil accept the lesson?" 
questioned my visitor, who was moving 
uneasily among the books and seed pack- 
ages. 

"He had to," I laughed, "because the 
Master married the woman he was in love 
with." 

"That's a good story, but really these 
outward things make no difference to an 
artist, his art is independent of circum- 
stances, or possessions, and expresses only 
what is locked within his own soul." 

"Fiddlesticks," was my reply, "the soul 
would be but an empty cask were it not 
filled with the experiences and sufferings 
of its possessor. Don't you know what 
Rosetti has written: 'By thine own tears 
thy song must tears beget, O Singer! 
Magic mirror thou hast none except thy 

[59] 



From Day to Day 

manifest heart — ' and something more 
about the musician having no amulet save 
his own anguish or ardor." 

"How awfully literary you are," declared 
the musician, "but do you know I think 
that the one who listens must have suffered 
and agonized also." 

"Yes, the old saying is true that to enjoy 
the wealth of the Indies one must bring the 
wealth of the Indies." 

"Well, it's pretty hard lines for us 
artists," declared my visitor, rising, "no 
comforts or companions, only anguish and 
ardor, but I must be off to rehearsal which 
is a part of my anguish; may I have a 
flower?" 

"Oh, yes, take a bachelor's button," I 
slyly suggested. 

"No, thank you, if you don't mind I'll 
have one of these sweet nancies." 



[60] 




Dusting Walden Pond 

I VERY housekeeper, even the maid- 
keeping one, should occasionally 
dust her own possessions, if only 
to learn whether these are worth 
possessing. There is nothing like the inti- 
mate relation between duster and dustee to 
bring home this fact, as well as other 
interesting domestic data. Yet to most 
women dusting is merely a mindless, mech- 
anical performance to be got through with 
as quickly as possible, and to be relegated 
to others when admissible. I recall the 
innumerable dustings that I gave to a small 
marble statuette of " Cleopatra and the 
Asp" before it occurred to me to question 
whether this lady was worth the trouble 
she cost. 

And all the world knows how Thoreau 
threw away an ornament, or bit of furnish- 
ing that graced his hermitage because he 
could not afford the time required to dust 
it while the furniture of his mind remained 
undusted. But Thoreau could not have 
been much of a housekeeper, or he would 
have recognized the fact that the process 

[61[ 



From Day to Day 

may be a dual one, that it is quite possible 
to brush away the dust from one's mental 
furniture at the same time that one is 
removing it from the material possession. 
Take the case of my Cleopatra for instance: 
though it was long before I questioned 
whether the statuette was a work of 
genuine artistic merit, justifying careful 
dusting, I frequently paused while perform- 
ing such an act to brush up my Shakespeare 
and to repeat: "I'm fire and air; my other 
elements I give to baser life," or: "Come 
thou mortal wretch with thy sharp teeth 
this knot intrinsicate, of life at once 
untie—" 

And Walden Pond itself, or at least the 
photograph of this famous water, which I 
was wont to dust so carefully used often 
to inspire me to take up the famous classic, 
written on its borders, and to refresh 
memories of the inspiring utterances of the 
great naturalist. An actual visit to the 
place seemed not to bring the author so 
vividly before one as when standing in 
front of the photograph, duster in one hand 
and open book in the other. No, Thoreau 
was not so great a housekeeper as he was a 
naturalist, else he would have realized that 
to throw away a useless ornament for no 

[62] 



Dusting Walden Pond 

better reason than because there is no time 
to devote to the dusting of this possession 
may be to deprive the mind of some 
precious mental stimulus. 



[63] 




The Bridge 

[T spans a ravine in a bit of woods 
that has the air of being remote 
from civilization, but which in 
reality is but about twenty miles 
from Chicago's center. It is but a crude 
and commonplace structure with no "archi- 
tectural features" or ' 'historical values," 
and it was built with no other purpose than 
that of providing a convenient passage 
across an otherwise impassable gulch. 

Yet nature has insisted upon decorating 
this bridge, and giving it some picturesque 
touches in the form of a clump of lovely 
maples from which it emerges, and by means 
of the golden rod, bergamot and other wild 
flowers that grow at each end. Below the 
bridge runs a somewhat uncertain stream 
over which bend some graceful sumacs and 
shad bushes, and in the springtime the 
blossoms on the latter look like ladies' white 
veils dropped from the bridge by careless 
hands. 

During the summer afternoons of leisure 
it is pleasant to lie in my hammock in the 
garden that overhangs this ravine and 

[65] 



From Day to Day- 
listen to the footsteps of wayfarers crossing 
the nearby bridge. There are not many 
of them, it would be tiresome always 
listening and looking, but there are enough 
to give charm to one's retreat, and piquancy 
to one's meditations. I find myself looking 
away from my book, from pen and ink 
people to the more attractive figures on the 
bridge, and it seems easier to weave a 
romance about these moving shapes than 
to find one in the pages of a dull novel. 

For most of these footsteps seem to be 
charged with expectancy and hope, and are 
not heavy and dragging like the footsteps 
on a city bridge. Even the grocer's boy 
who has left his wagon at the other end of 
the bridge and is crossing with his basket 
to an out-of-the-way customer whistles the 
"Meditations from Thais" as he goes, and 
though he has difficulties with the air you 
know that its sugared sweetness has sunk 
into his soul while listening to the playing 
of a great artist at a nearby summer garden. 

Friendship goes blithely across my bridge 
in the form of basketfuls of vegetables for 
gardenless neighbors, or huge bunches of 
bergamot and black-eyed susans for those 
who are unable to wander about the woods. 
And frequently I catch fascinating glimpses 

[66] 



The Bridge 

of gay knitting bags hurrying across to join 
other knitting bags on the oposite side, or 
white napkins covering some dainties de- 
signed to tempt the appeties of the sick. 

Lovers seldom linger on my bridge, 
though I have fancied that I have detected 
an occasional pair pausing to gaze at the 
sumacs and shadbushes, and seeming to take 
an exaggerated interest in some bird's nest 
in a tree below. Once a white handker- 
chief floated out of the hands of a small 
figure in rose-pink and straightway the figure 
beside it, in brown corduroy, disappeared 
only to reappear a few moments later 
carrying the bit of white muslin. I ven- 
tured to wonder if, after marriage, they 
should be crossing this bridge and she 
should again drop her handkerchief whether 
he would be as eager to recover it. But 
why cross a bridge before it is reached? 

On another occasion I came face to face 
with two of the bridge-walkers who had 
got lost, and had strayed into my garden 
for information. They seemed more inter- 
ested in the larkspurs and foxgloves than 
in the directions I gave them and they 
presented such happy faces that I was not 
in the least bit surprised when assured that 
they had been married but an hour. The 

[67] 



From Day to Day 

wedding had occurred at the home of a 
mutual friend, and choosing to walk to the 
station alone they had been directed which 
road to take. But they had turned the 
wrong corner, crossed the wrong bridge, 
and now among my flowers seemed quite 
unconcerned whether they missed their 
train or not. I gave them a wedding 
bouquet of foxgloves and larkspurs, and 
returned to my hammock hoping that this 
was not an evil omen, and that they would 
not always be turning the wrong corners 
and crossing the wrong bridges. 

But for the most part I have but little 
intercourse with this goodly company of 
bridge walkers and they for their part are 
ignorant of the fact that other eyes than 
those of the birds are watching them. Yet 
I count them among my most congenial 
friends, and am grateful to them for the 
whistled airs, the basketed and white nap- 
kined offerings, and for meditations con- 
cerning woman's humanity to woman. 



[68] 




Size Fourteen 

ONCE knew a woman who glor- 
ied in the fact that at an advanced 
age she still continued to wear 
the garments of juvenility, that 
the gowns and coats that now hid her 
stooping figure were of the same size as 
those which covered the erect frame of her 
girlhood. Physically, she had never grown 
up, and while not being conspicuously 
undersized or underweighted she was in 
reality not normally developed. 

To many women this would have been a 
source of mortification, and they would have 
sought to conceal immaturity under the 
garments that properly belonged to age, 
but this woman seemed to take a genuine 
delight in underdevelopment, and when 
purchasing a gown or waist she would an- 
swer the saleswoman's query: "what size 
please?" with the quick and proud response: 
"fourteen." 

Of course every purchaser of "ready- 
mades" knows that in these days when 
women never really become old women 
there is not so much difference between 

[69] 



From Day to Day 

juvenile and senior apparel; perhaps the 
misses' waists are a trifle more girlish in cut, 
and perhaps the colors of their gowns are a 
bit livelier, but in general it may be said 
that the styles are the same. 

And this wearer really gloated over even 
the slight difference in cut, and over the 
gay colors with which she arrayed her ma- 
ture but immature figure. And when a 
gown that had caught her fancy proved to 
be even of greater juvenility of style than 
usually characterized size fourteen she 
rejoiced in secret over the fact, and regarded 
this new possession with a particular affec- 
tion. 

But a strange punishment overtook the 
vanity of this woman. As the years went 
on and she continued to haunt the misses 
section of ready-mades, and to answer 
"size fourteen" to the queries of sales- 
women her mind seemed gradually to take 
on a juvenile cut and her spirits to betray 
an unbecoming girlishness. It seemed as if 
she was so dominated by her clothes, and 
she had always set great store by what she 
wore, that her mind grew to adapt itself 
to her raiment and she became, intellect- 
ually, "size fourteen." 

[70] 



Size Fourteen 

In plain words she dressed too youthfully, 
and her spirits were too lively for one of 
her years. People said of her that she 
would appear much more dignified and 
properly sedate if she would not insist upon 
decking herself out in such youthful looking 
clothes, and really she could not, however 
hard she tried, be dignified and sedate in 
such garments, dignity and sedateness did 
not go with size fourteen. 

And the strange thing about it all was 
that she did not realize her punishment and 
that while her friends were deploring this 
prolonged juvenility she imagined that they 
were saying to one another: "How wonder- 
ful she is, she is the kind that never grows 
old, because she will always keep the 
joyousness of youth, the spirit of "size 
fourteen." 

And I often question whether, after all, 
she was not more to be envied than pitied. 



[71] 



In Memoriam 

i^jlj^JHIS morning a pall seems to hang 
ll^tt^l a b° ve a certain row of handsome 
|lsf||^ r ed volumes on my unglassed 
^sIbIIs shelves, and I glance sorrowfully 
at the picture of their author that rests on 
my desk. For the morning paper has 
brought the sad news that Henry James is 
dead, and for a moment I feel that one of 
my dearest household companions has been 
taken away. But only for a moment do I 
feel thus, for in reality I know that the great 
novelist is still here, to share my solitude 
and inspire my domestic activities, and 
that he will continue to "lubricate my days," 
to use one of his own phrases, as long as 
there are days to be lived through. 

Personal acquaintance with an author, or 
visits to his home and haunts do not always 
tend to deepen your sense of intimacy with 
him, or intensify your admiration for his 
work, and I recall my disappointment when 
upon visiting Concord, and the home and 
grave of its sage I realized that, for me, 
Emerson's spirit did not hover about Sleepy 
Hollow, or even about the old homestead, 

[73] 



From Day to Day 

but that it was shut up in my little library 
at home. 

Yet I am glad to have heard that 
Cathedral-bell voice of Henry James, and 
to have been permitted to gaze for an hour 
or so at the face of one who had given me 
so many delicious moments. "Ladies and 
Gentlemen," he began, and then he smiled 
and pretended to peer about for the gentle- 
men, who of course were sadly in the 
minority. I am glad, too, that on this 
occasion when I stood in line waiting my 
turn to shake the hand of the great novelist 
he was whisked off by a zealous hostess 
before I had an opportunity to make the 
silly speech that was forming in my brain. 
Fancy daring to make a speech, to utter a 
witticism to Henry James! 

Gazing this morning at the backs of these 
prized volumes I realize that no girl actually 
living in the flesh has ever seemed more real 
than poor, pretty Daisy Miller in her white 
muslin "with a hundred flounces and knots 
of pale-colored ribbon." Yes, Henry James 
knew how to dress up his heroines and make 
you look twice to see what they wore. As 
for Daisy's incorrigible little brother, Ran- 
dolph, I can still hear him crunching the 

[741 



In Memoriam 

lump of sugar bestowed by the inquisitive 
hero and declaring: "Oh, blazes, it's hard." 
Of course, many of Daisy's successors 
had but little of the flesh-and-blood quality, 
but they had brains and nerves and the gift 
of saying such clever things. Or if they 
could not say the clever things themselves 
their creator said them for them, and many 
of these utterances will remain as long, nay 
longer, than the red volumes hold together. 
There was the girl whose eyes looked as if 
they had just been sent home from the 
wash, and the one with the "brambles of 
the woodland caught in the folds of her 
gown and a look as if the satyrs had toyed 
with her tresses." There was the woman 
with "a loud hurrying voice like the bell of 
a steamboat," and the pne who always 
"jumped into the conversation with a hand- 
spring." And there was the hero who had 
'fallen in love, really fallen in love,' "and 
the fracture was of a kind that would make 
him permanently lame," and the wife who 
had washed her hands off her husband but 
was always "carrying the water of this 
ablution about with her for the inspection 
of her friends." But why speak of the 
characters in the past when they are still 
here alive on my shelves, and ready at a 

[75] 



From Day to Day 

moment's notice to exhibit their queer- 
nesses. 

Of course, one is not always in a mood for 
James, there are moments when one is 
ready to pass coldly by these highly 
evolved heroines and choose instead one of 
those "frail, passive, wild-rose blossom 
women of Hardy's who, without passion or 
strength or constancy, have but one power, 
to hold and break the hearts of men." 
But I always hold it as a housekeeper's test 
of the power of an author his ability to send 
her from him, to cause her to close his book 
and run to perform some purely mechanical 
domestic task simply because she cannot 
go on reading until she has had time to 
gloat over some particular bit of delicious 
profundity, and has worked off her excess 
of delight on some material object. Many 
and many a time has this housekeeper put 
down one of Henry James' stories and 
rushed out into the kitchen to fill the pepper 
bottle, or clean out the table-drawer, 
thinking all the time not of the pepper 
bottle or the drawer, but of that bit of 
human insight that has just been revealed. 

Not all his feminine readers have found 
this stimulation in the great novelist's 
work, and some have confessed that for 

[76] 



In Memoriam 

them he is duller than the dullest household 
task, and that they would rather go on filling 
pepper bottles and cleaning out drawers to 
the end of time than to be obliged to read 
him. But for one reader at least, Henry 
James is inextricably woven with domestic 
occupations, he has imparted color and 
charm to them, or to repeat again his own 
phrase: he has lubricated her days. 



[77] 




Opera Versus Sunsets 

3 BOUT half a mile away from our 
suburban bower, and in a beau- 
tiful wooded spot, summer grand 
opera is offered to those who like 
to take their music informally and out-of- 
doorly, and to regale themselves with the 
perennial charms of such old time favorites 
as "Martha," "Suzanne," "Rigoletto," 
"Madame Butterfly." And at about equal 
distance, but in another direction nature 
puts on the dramatic spectacle of a sunset, 
to be witnessed from the auditorium of what 
goes under the name of the Green Bay Road. 
And it our custom to ask each other: 
"Well, what shall it be this evening: 
Suzanne, or the sunset? Martha, or a ride 
across the Skokie marshes? Madame 
Butterfly, or just plain real butterflies flut- 
tering about the roadside milkweed?" 
And almost always, with the vision of 
Martha addressing her artificial last rose, 
of Suzanne smoking her everlasting cigar- 
ette, of the bagged Soloist in Rigoletto, 
and of the warbled woes of Madame Butter- 
fly we decide in favor of what we like to call 

[79] 



From Day to Day 

Nature's Movies, and as we ride by the 
illuminated gates that open upon the 
scenes of operatic suffering we say to each 
other: ''wouldn't you rather be here than 
there?" 

"But I thought you were music-lovers," 
kind friends will protest, and meekly we 
explain that we are, but we like the kind of 
music that leaves something to our imagi- 
nations and allows us to summon before the 
inward eye our own ideals of Marthas and 
Suzannes. We declare that we are rather 
weary of operatic absurdities, of shouted 
love confessions, of proclaimed secrets and 
death-bed solos, and we prefer, while 
listening to music, to forget the elemental 
passions of man, and be minded only of his 
spiritual attributes. 

1 ' Nonsense ! ' ' say our friends, ' ' your trouble 
is a lack of imagination, you are not able to 
discover that the artificial roses, the cigar- 
ettes, and the bagged soloists that you so 
despise are but symbols that assist the 
mind to understand and the heart to 
enjoy the music. You should" — but we are 
off for the marshes, for the music afforded 
by the "wailful choir of small gnats," and 
by the "gathering swallows twittering in 
the skies." 

[80] 




At The Death Bed of Hens 



ITERATURE owes much to poul- 
try for its inspiration and for its 
phraseology. Has not chanti- 
cleer crowed through innumerable 
immortal works, and have not such terms 
as 'hen-pecked,' 'chicken-hearted,' 'hen- 
minded' become part of the bed-rock of 
our language? 

So it is quite in the nature of things that 
when present at the death bed of a hen — 
and in my time I have been the unhappy 
witness of the dissolution of many a worthy 
fowl — I should be reminded of a poem of 
Matthew Arnold's entitled 'A Wish.' And 
it is with no feeling of levity or of disrespect 
to the memory of the great poet that on 
such occasions I recall this poem, but it is 
simply that the dying of these dumb crea- 
tures seems to be accomplished with the 
dignity and absence of the "ceremonious 
air of gloom" which Arnold hoped might 
characterize his own departure from the 
world. He wished for more than this; he 
would have his death-bed unvisited either 

[81] 



From Day to Day 

by "some doctor full of phrase and fame," 
or his ' 'brother-doctor of the soul:" 
"To canvass with official breath 

The future and its viewless things — 
That undiscovered mystery 

Which one who feels death's winnoning 
wings 
Must needs read clearer, sure, than he! 

Our funeral customs seem to have yielded 
less to progress than any other of our 
practices. Perhaps there is less of crepe 
than there used to be and the "ceremonious 
air of gloom" is somewhat less ceremonious, 
but we still demand blackness to express our 
grief and we hurry about in search of a 
minister to 'officiate' at the last service, and 
to express some paid-for sentiments on the 
life of one whom perhaps he never saw. 

"I don't mind dying," a friend once re- 
marked to me, "but I can't bear the thought 
that the Reverend Doctor Shale should 
preach my funeral sermon." If some sym- 
pathetic friend who had worked side by 
side with the lost comrade could utter, no 
matter how clumsily, an expression of 
his appreciation and his grief it would be 
well, though perhaps after all it does not 
matter, for at every funeral each friend 

[82] 



At The Death Bed of Hens 

present is in reality preaching the sermon, 
while the deeds of the dead go marching on. 
The hen is spared these ceremonies and 
the way she withdraws to a remote spot to 
fight out her battle with nature, and the 
manner in which she gently and meekly 
submits to her fate seem sometimes better 
than human. To be sure the other hens 
will often manifest their contempt and 
disgust by spiteful peckings at a suffering 
sister, and we deplore their cruelty, but 
there have been atrocities committed in 
the name of civilization that make the hen 
seem like a humanitarian in comparison. 
And after all, who knows but what this 
gentle sufferer, at the moment of dissolution, 
sees into the future and its viewless things, 
and is vouchsafed some faint understanding 
of the "undiscovered mystery." 



[83] 




Autumn Leaves and Daffodils 

E played wall-flower last evening 
at a children's party, but why 
call ourselves flowers when in 
reality we were autumn leaves, 
swept up against a wall to form a rusty 
background to a host of golden daffodils, 
dancing and fluttering about on the ball 
room floor. 

The dancers were not all of the daffodil 
type, but had other prototypes in the green 
world. There was a queen lily in white 
taffeta with a physique of royal proportions, 
and a face that recalled Mary Anderson in 
her starry days, and there was a rose in 
yellow gauze who was a symbol of June. 
A hepatica in pale pink tulle reviewed the 
charm of the first spring days, and a plump 
little buttercup in green chiffon aroused 
visions of midsummer. They all danced 
and fluttered, and the autumn leaves 
against the wall rustled and grew reminis- 
cent. 

''I remember when I was a little girl 
attending parties," said one of them, "we 
were not allowed to wear tulle and chiffon, 

185] 



From Day to Day 

but were grateful for dotted muslins and 
pink sashes." "Yes," said another, "and 
I can recall a time when I would have been 
in ecstasies over a dotted muslin and a pink 
sash, for I was compelled to wear a black 
and white check plaid every Saturday at 
dancing school, and when the closing party 
arrived, for fear I might become too vain 
and self-conscious if permitted a new gown 
I was obliged to appear in the black and 
white check. Never shall I forget the 
suffering of that evening or the awful 
mortification of being the only child present 
in an old gown. Children know how to 
suffer as well as to enjoy." 

And then some of the autumn leaves 
became philosophical and questioned each 
other as to whether there was any delight 
in after life, any artistic triumph or com- 
mercial success, any gratified ambition or 
professional achievement that could com- 
pensate for the loss of youth, or be as keen 
as its simple delights. Why could we not 
always remain children, they sadly asked 
one another, and be forever nodding and 
dancing on ball room floors? 

And then a certain red-brown leaf re- 
marked that there were many a flinty little 
heart hidden under the taffeta and tulle, 

[86] 



Autumn Leaves and Daffodils 

and that after all, were not the only joys 
worthy of attainment those that came after 
life had been refined in the crucible of pain 
and suffering? 

And just then the lily in white taffeta 
lost her program. Heavens! what a calam- 
ity, and how was she to go on dancing 
without it. She appealed to her fourteen- 
year old host. Had he seen anything of 
a lost program? "Gee!" was his answer, 
"everybody's lost their program." But at 
last the lily's was found and the nodding 
and dancing went on. 

And of these autumn leaves against the 
wall the daffodils on the floor took no heed. 
They were Peter Bells in their attitude 
towards these disciplined beings. To them 
an autumn leaf against the ball room wall 
was simply an autumn leaf, a thing that 
had had its day, and was now cut off from 
the joys of dancing and fluttering. The 
leaves scattered and went home to enjoy 
at later moments, with their inward eyes, 
and accompanying thrill of pleasure, this 
charming spectacle of beautiful childhood 
at its merrymaking. "And would you 
be a child again?" one leaf asked of another. 
The answer was prompt: "Oh, no, no, no!" 



[87] 




To My Attic 

HERE have been many attic 
philosophers, wise men who either 
from necessity or choice have 
brought to these humble retreats 
a lofty kind of thinking and a theory of 
life that made them indifferent to their 
humble surroundings, or disposed to regard 
them with a fine scorn and fortitude. But 
when this suburban philosopher climbs the 
step-ladder stairs that lead to her attic nest 
she goes to seek there a philosophy that is 
already made and which seems to be a part 
of its atmosphere. Instead of ancient 
chests, and travel-beaten trunks filled with 
actual curios and mementoes and smelling 
of sandal wood and attar of roses this attic 
appears to contain quaint imaginary chests 
and trunks that are crowded with all sorts 
of odds and ends of philosophy and ethics 
that are the fragrant relics of dead and 
gone philosophers. 

Of course, the material curios and mem- 
entoes are there too, driven into dark 
corners by a philosophy that accepts only 
the spiritual significance of possessions, but 

[89] 



From Day to Day 

the real inhabitants of the place are the 
ghostly presences of bygone philosophers 
and the little motes of their high thinking 
with which they have filled the air. Even 
the most prosaic of worldly souls who 
venture to climb the steep stairs anticipat- 
ing a conventional garret at the top will, 
before they have caught their breath, gasp 
out some commonplace quotation about 
this being indeed a little kindgom of con- 
tent, and restfully remote from the madding 
crowd. 

Yes, it is a little kingdom of content, 
though it is difficult to analyze this attic- 
ized feeling; sometimes I think it is due to 
the mere fact of its difference from the 
conventional city study or bed-room, and 
again the absence of regulation doors and 
windows and decorated walls are enough to 
account for its charm. On the days when 
the rain patters on the roof or the squirrels 
scamper over it, or when the acorns drop 
upon it with a loud thud one is at no loss to 
account for the romance of the place, though 
I believe there have been attic roofs visited 
by rain, squirrels and acorns which shel- 
tered no romantic philosophy. And so one 
is forced to the conclusion that the peace 
and content, the philosophy and fancies 

[90] 



To My Attic 

that lurk there are individual matters, and 
that indeed all indoor philosophies are 
individual matters. But whatever be the 
reason for these mental curios I only know 
that here in this suburban attic peace laps 
one round with a greater air of security 
than in any other spot. One may sleep in 
any of its corners and weep in them too, one 
may gaze at the stars through tiny case- 
ment windows and try on one's new hats 
before blurred cast-off mirrors. 

Ah, yes! the mirrors are the only things 
that will not yield to the spell of the place, 
and in spite of their blurredness they will 
insist upon pinning you down to plain facts 
and figures. But while you are making 
this admission to yourself and are staring 
at the antiquated reflection in the glass 
the dear old philosophy of the place will 
step out of some imaginary chest to assure 
you that the new hat is not a bit too juvenile 
for your face, for the face is but the index 
of the soul and souls have no age, while 
beauty is only in the eye of the beholder. 

And then there are those pictured faces 
of dead and gone geniuses gazing at you 
from crude shelves and ' 'sealed" walls, and 
assuring you that they, at least care, not for 
your years. There is Madame Modjeski 

[91] 



From Day to Day 

to recall immortal youth as expressed in her 
Juliets and Rosalinds, Mrs. Browning shak- 
ing her curls at you and declaring that after 
all it is quite possible for moss roses to bud 
and bloom in the snow, and Keats, to assure 
you that all you need to know is that 
Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty, and 
Matthew Arnold looking out of a cheap 
frame and shedding a "sweet reasonable- 
ness" over everything you do. 

Oh, yes! when I want to be in the com- 
pany of the immortals, immortal truths and 
undying philosophies, I climb my attic 
stairs, open the imaginary chests, and take 
my full of inherited spiritual treasures. 



[92] 



Those Little Court House Bells 



HERE are not so many Chicago- 
ans whose memories are illumined 
by the blaze of the Great Fire, 
HJ$&1 and we find it the better part of 
discretion not to mention this event in 
general conversation with those we regard as 
our contemporaries. For in this matter it 
almost seems as if we had no contemporaries, 
that we stood alone on the burning deck of 
the Chicago ship, and that all the other 
passengers were yet to be born. For any 
allusion to this tragedy only meets with the 
response: "Oh, that was before my time, 
but I remember of hearing my grandfather 
talk about it." 

Well, we like to talk about it, sometimes 
of an evening, and while sitting before our 
own fire we venture to rake the ashes of 
this memorable blaze. Paul is a South side 
boy, madly driving a distracted father down 
town to a scene of desolation and ruin, and 
afterwards helping him to stake out a small 
portion of the lake front, where the business 
of selling dried fruits might be resumed. 
And I am a small West side child awakened 

[93] 



From Day to Day 

in the night by the sound of voices in the 
street and the cry: "The Court House is on 
fire!" Dimly, I was aware that all of the 
parental savings were invested in a row of 
buildings near the Court House, and so I 
found it not surprising that this midnight 
cry was followed by some confusion in the 
front bed-room, and later by the soft closing 
of the door. 

Yes, the Court House burned, as did the 
row of buildings, but the Court House bell 
was fireproof and later it was made up into 
a million tiny bells that tinkled on chains 
about the necks of very early Chicagoans. 
The memory of the after horrors, the dep- 
rivations and sufferings are almost for- 
gotten, but I can still see those precious 
bells and hear their musical tinkles. 

And it is to the sound of these bells that 
we revive our memories and thus question 
each other: 

"Do you remember," asks Paul, "those 
lucky people who w r ere obliged to live in 
their vaults, life cliff-dwellers, because they 
could find no other shelter, and the wonder- 
ful melted specimens that lay all about 
them? Why we boys used to walk down 
town with grape baskets on our arms and 

[94] 



Those Little Court House Bells 

come back so heavily loaded that we could 
hardly reach our own doors." 

And true to my housekeeper's instinct I 
interrupt: "And the cups and saucers, all 
melted and run together, do you remember 
them?" 

"Don't I? and the melted nails, didn't 
you gather all these relics into a beautiful 
pile to serve as an ornament to the front 
yard?" 

Alas! no such relics were allowed to grace 
the front yard of the little West side cottage 
to which we moved; such reminders of the 
wreck of a hard-won competency were not 
to be tolerated, and I shall never forget my 
grief over this decree, while even now I 
envy Paul his remembered relics. 

And then he thus muses: "Isn't it 
strange that those horrible old specimens 
and relics should have made a deeper im- 
pression on our childish memories than the 
actual sufferings and miseries of the time?" 

"Yes," I answer, "I didn't much care 
about the burning of the Court House, but 
how eager I was to possess one of those 
little bells, but I suppose that is because 
material objects play so much more im- 
portant a part in children's lives than 

[95] 



From Day to Day 

abstract miseries. Yet perhaps the reason 
that I so loved those bells was because 
their cheerful tinkle seemed to ring out the 
old Chicago and ring in the new, and I recog- 
nized their symoblic value." 

11 Perhaps," said Paul, as he poked about 
among the ashes of our real fire. 



[96] 




Other Library Tables 

IF the fireplace is, as some one has 
said, the soul of a house, then 
the library table may be said to 
be its spirit. At least there is 
no piece of furniture in a home that will 
so surely reveal the character of the in- 
mates, and none which is more intimate or 
personal. The pictures on the walls, the 
ornaments and hangings may represent 
an outgrown taste, a bye-gone fancy, but 
that motley assemblage of books and maga- 
zines that are found on a library table is 
almost sure to express the latest interests 
and aspirations of the inmates. 

Of course, one doesn't refer to those 
museums of literary immortals sometimes 
found enclosed within decorative book- 
ends, and which seem to have been put 
there with no other purpose than to im- 
press a visitor with the owner's fine taste 
in things intellectual. Of this goodly com- 
pany is 'Emerson's Essays,' First and 
Second Series, " Little Journeys to the 
Homes of the Great," "Sesame and Lilies," 
and "Over the Tea-Cups." Not that any 

[97] 



From Day to Day 

one of these volumes is unworthy of a 
permanent resting place on library tables, 
and not that they may not have been placed 
there to offer a needed stimulus in dull 
hours, but somehow one can always tell 
by the expression on their covers whether 
they represent a deference to accepted 
public taste, or are the beloved companions 
of their owners. 

And what a debt of gratitude do we owe 
to other people's library tables, and how 
often have they been the means of con- 
tributing not a little to both our education 
and our entertainment. It is one of the 
most delightful of the spirit's adventures to 
come unexpectedly upon some refreshing 
piece of literature on the table of a friend, 
and to lose one's self in it while the hostess 
makes ready to join her guest. Memory 
recalls many agreeable acquaintances made 
in this way. Don Quixote first introduced 
himself to me from such a position and so 
did 'The Mayor of Casterbridge,' and 
'Daniel Deronda.' On a memorable occa- 
sion 'The Idiot' held me spell bound in the 
chair of a stranger, and 'Diana of the 
Crossways' and 'Rhoda Fleming' caused me 
to be grateful to both their creator and 
their collector. 

[98] 



Other Library Tables 

And then what delightful renewals of 
old acquaintances one sometimes enjoys at 
other tables. You may venture to be 
patronizing when you see some of your old 
literary idols evidently giving present de- 
light to a later reader. "I see you are 
reading 'Henry Esmond,' " you remark 
casually to your hostess, "remarkable novel, 
isn't it?" But your friend hastens to 
assure you that of course she read the book 
years ago, and that now she merely wished 
to look up a certain scene, or to recall a 
famous interview. 

But you are glad that she has given you 
this opportunity to revive your own youth, 
and you are grateful for these meetings 
with old loves. And perhaps some child 
in the house you visit happens to be reading 
'David Copperfield' for the first time, if 
children of to-day do read David Copper- 
field, and you are pleased to be once more 
informed that: "I was born on a Friday, 
at twelve o'clock at night. It was re- 
marked that the clock began to strike and 
I began to cry simultaneously." 

Or you may be permitted an entrance into 
dear old "Vanity Fair," and to fall again 
under the spell of those opening lines: 
"While the present century was in its 

[99] 



From Day to Day 

teens, and on one sunshiny morning in 
June, there drove up to the great iron gate 
of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young 
ladies, a large family coach." You know 
perfectly well who is to enter that coach and 
what is to be the destiny of the occupants, 
but you relinquish the book with a sigh 
when your hostess appears, and you ask 
yourself whether you would not rather 
be left alone with Becky and Amelia than 
to meet, in the flesh, the most charming of 
hostesses. 



[100] 




Beethoven In The Rain 



*F course, from the point of view 
of the managers of this summer 
garden it was unfortunate that it 
should begin to rain just before 
concert time, and from the musicians' 
standpoint no doubt it was discouraging, 
and even depressing, to play to forty 
people and more than forty times that 
number of empty seats. But if you hap- 
pened to be one of these weather-proof 
music lovers, and was seated in a front seat 
that shut out the other thirty-nine listeners 
and gave you an unobstructed view of the 
musicians and their leader, then indeed you 
might feel yourself the favored of the gods, 
one of the forty immortals. 

At least this is the way I felt this August 
afternoon as I gazed contentedly from my 
snug seat in the third row, at the rain 
which was increasing to a torrent, and 
which seemed to shut out the rest of the 
world. And when the leader took his 
place, and the orchestra played the opening 
bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony one 
could not but feel that it would be well 

[101] 



From Day to Day 

never to go back to the trivial round of 
daily life, but pass quietly out of existence 
to the sound of the rain, and the Fifth 
Symphony. 

The storm grew worse, bending to the 
ground the golden-glow and pink phlox that 
bloomed in a bed just outside the pavilion. 
Darkness fell upon the group of listeners, a 
darkness that seemed the more intense for 
the electric lights that illumined the stage 
and the faces of the musicians. 

During the brief interval between the 
playing of the Adagio and the Allegro a 
deaf old gentleman, accompanied by a pret- 
ty young girl, moved to the front row, and 
he was heard to say in a loud voice to his 
companion: " Can't understand music? You 
don't have to understand it, nobody under- 
stands it, you have simply to feel it." The 
old gentleman was certainly living up to 
this requirement, and so, it appeared, was 
every member of this still and absorbed 
audience. 

The storm had not abated when the 
time came for the intermission, and few of 
the listeners ventured to leave their seats. 
The deaf old gentleman was explaining the 
different instruments to the pretty girl, and 
after listening to him for a time I wandered 

[102] 



Beethoven in the Rain 

to the back of the pavilion, pausing on my 
way to greet a sweet-faced old lady with 
her head wrapped in a gray chiffon scarf. 

"You here on such a day?" I ventured to 
remark. 

"Oh, yes, I was obliged to come," she 
said with a charming smile, "for you see 
that symphony was played for me. I wrote 
to the conductor, some time ago, requesting 
that the orchestra play this glorious work, 
and explaining that it had always been my 
favorite composition, for it is, although I 
love everything the composer wrote. When 
I was a girl," she went on, giving a twist to 
the gray scarf, "I used to ask everyone I 
was introduced to if they liked Beethoven 
and if they said no, why I just didn't seem 
to want to have anything more to do with 
them." 

"How proud and happy you must have 
been while the orchestra was playing," I 
exclaimed. 

"Yes, indeed," she replied, "You see I 
didn't get any answer to my request for 
several days, and I had decided that the 
conductor was too busy to give it any 
attention and so had made my reservations 
for a Western trip. But when the note 
came this morning, and such a nice note 

[103] 



From Day to Day 

it was, and I was assured that I might hear 
the whole Symphony to-day, I simply 
threw up all my plans, cancelled my reser- 
vation — and put on my rain coat." 

"And do you feel repaid?" I demanded. 

"Repaid!" she echoed, "why I lived the 
best part of my life over again while the 
orchestra was playing. All of the happiest 
moments of my past came back to me, and 
the unhappy ones were forgotten. My 
dead loved ones seemed to be with me 
again, and we smiled at each other and 
were content not to speak but merely to 
listen to this noble music." 

The words of the deaf old gentleman 
came back to me: "You don't have to 
understand music, you have simply to feel 
it," and it seemed to me that an old age 
that could be thrilled and aroused to sweet 
memories by the magic of music was an 
old age robbed of its terrors. 



[104] 




The Village House 

F suburbs may be said to have 
souls, and there are those who 
would be unwilling to grant that 
they have, but I say, if they 
have, then a certain suburb that I know, 
and which is located not more than a 
thousand miles from the city is blessed in 
such a possession. And this soul takes the 
form of a modest little edifice called the 
"Village House." Of course there are 
many houses in this picturesque bit of 
suburban woods, but there is but one 
1 'Village House." And the houses of the 
village seem to be bound to the "Village 
House" by a kind of fraternal tie, and there 
is between them such a spirit of mutual 
co-operation and helpfulness as to make the 
larger house appear like a big brother, or 
perhaps we should say a watchful mother 
to the smaller structure. 

Not that this 'Village House' is large or 
imposing, on the contrary, its charm lies in 
the smallness of its size, in its shrinking 
modesty of manner, and in the fact that its 

[105] 



From Day to Day 

purpose and activities do not vaunt them- 
selves from the bricks and mortar. 

"And what is that little building?" a 
stranger guest who is passing will ask, and 
straightway will come the answer: "Oh, 
that's the 'Village House,' and there's a 
cake sale going on to-day, won't you come 
in and help pay for our decorations by 
buying your dessert for dinner?" And 
though the guest is but just off the train 
she has been here long enough to catch the 
unique spirit of the place, and in she goes 
shining with benevolent intentions, and 
out she comes laden with buns and beans, 
jellies and jams, cakes and candies, or 
whatever may have appealed to her gas- 
tronomical fancy from the large collection 
of edibles gathered from private pantries 
and contributed by generous housewives. 
For all of the inhabitants of this little 
suburb take a personal and intimate interest 
in the "Village House," an interest that 
comes from having taken a hand in its 
decorations, in the making of its curtains, 
the filling of its library shelves, the arrange- 
ment of the flowers in its vases. 

Once when a large sum was needed for 
some necessary changes in this little build- 

[106] 



The Village House 

ing the villagers came forward and pledged 
themselves not only to raise the required 
sum but to earn it. Most of those inter- 
ested agreed to contribute a specified 
amount and to raise this amount by per- 
sonal effort. All of the talents hidden 
under napkins now came to light, and all 
the lights concealed under bushels were 
permitted full shining. If you wanted your 
shopping done for you, or your doughnuts 
made for you, or your bureau drawers put 
in order for you, there was some one who 
could do these things. Fair ladies peddled 
vegetables at your doors, and fine gentlemen 
sold fly-swatters on the streets. At night 
talented troubadours serenaded under your 
windows, and by day noted painters sat in 
your garden and painted you a picture that 
would have been an ornament to any public 
gallery. Of course, the money was raised 
and there was one memorable evening when 
the "Village House" echoed with the laugh- 
ter aroused by the recital of these different 
methods of earning money. 

But this soul of the suburb is not always 
a merry soul, sometimes it is a very serious 
one. For grave problems connected with 
the welfare of the plan, the laying out of its 

[107] 



From Day to Day 

streets, the education of its children, the 
annihilation of its mosquitoes are brought 
up for discussion here, and hidden talents 
of oratory and declamation first come to 
light within its walls. And on the occa- 
sions of those serious meetings the place 
may be converted into the coziness of a 
home living room with open fire and evening 
lamp, or it may be made to present the more 
formal appearance of a public assembly- 
room. 

When as a "restless analyst," Henry 
James returned to New England for re- 
vived impressions of the American scene he 
found that the New England village lacked 
two features that made for the charm of the 
villages of Old England. These were the 
Parson and the Squire and every novel 
reader knows how important a part these 
personages play in English fiction. 

But in the suburb of which I write many 
of the men can at a moment's notice play 
the part of either Parson or Squire, and if 
there are grievances to be aired they are 
always ready to assist at the airing. And 
as for the Lady Bountifuls they flock in 
large numbers to this suburban centre and 
there distribute their bounties or cheer on 

[108] 



The Village House 

the citizen who is acting as Preacher or 
Squire. And as this "Village House" is the 
recognized soul of the place, Parson, Squire, 
and Lady Bountifuls are each and all 
interested in its preservation. 



[109] 




Twenty-Five Bouquets 

EMANDED our telephone, early 
one August morning: ' 'Would 
you be willing to make up 
twenty-five bouquets to present 
to the poor city mothers at the picnic to 
be given to them to-day, on the lawn in 
front of the Village House?" Of course 
I would, for what more congenial task for 
a flower-lover than to gather in from her 
neighbors' gardens and her own the forms 
of beauty that might move away the pall 
from dark spirits. Who could tell into 
what dingy corners these offerings might 
shed their charms, or into what dull lives 
they might bring memories of more flowery 
existence. 

Twenty -Five bouquets! Why that 

meant twenty - five gifts of happiness to 
dull-eyed, care-ridden souls, and indeed 
there might be fifty souls who would come 
under the influence of these flowers, for 
were there not waiting ones at home thirst- 
ing for news of the picnic and ready to be 
thrilled by the smallest of its festivities. 

[Ill] 



From Day to Day 

And so I, the bouquet-maker, went blithely 
and sentimentally to my task and found 
great pleasure in bringing together floral 
affinities, and in keeping apart those that 
were never meant to be joined together in 
a bouquet. But at about the seventh 
bouquet my flowery sentimentality seemed 
to droop, and I began to glance with im- 
patience at the pail-full of gay blossoms. 
'Even flowers may become tiresome, if one 
has too much of them,' I said to myself,' and 
really these flaunting marigolds get on my 
nerves. No wonder that William Morris 
likened certain double garden flowers to 
lumps of cut paper; I think I'll go out and 
gather some of the wild things that grow 
by the roadside.' 

Ah yes, these uncultivated blossoms have 
a beauty and charm all their own; they are 
more rugged than the cultivated blossoms 
and do not wither so quickly within doors. 
After all it seems hardly worth while to 
cultivate a garden when such lovely results 
may be obtained without this labor. But 
is it likely that these poor mothers of large 
families will care about any of these blos- 
soms? Wouldn't they rather take home 
some pieces of cake, or left-over sand- 
wiches? And flowers fade so quickly; no 

[112] 



Twenty-Five Bouquets 

doubt before they reach the tenement 
quarters these blossoms will have gone the 
way of both the wild and the cultivated, 
and be fit only for the dump heap. 

Who would have believed that it would 
take so long to arrange twenty-five bou- 
quets, and who would think that the face 
of a daisy could ever betray so much weari- 
ness? And what messy things flowers are, 
to be sure, really it makes one sad to look 
upon so many broken-necked zinnias and 
petalless cosmos. 

Well, the bouquets are finished at last 
and when arranged in a large gathering 
basket they make quite a gay and im- 
posing appearance, and do indeed seem like 
so many shapes of beauty designed to lift 
the pall from dark spirits. So I'm off for 
the dark spirits. 

They were there on the lawn surrounding 
the Village House awaiting a second in- 
stallment of sandwiches, and perhaps the 
fourth or fifth cup of coffee. All had par- 
taken of coffee, children as well as grown 
people, babes in arms and youngsters just 
learning to toddle. But before presenting 
the bouquets they must be given a short 
ride around the country. Five of the 
picnickers fell to my share, and did I ever 

[113] 



From Day to Day 

act as chauffeur to a more appreciative 
five? 

"My but this is swell air," declared an 
eighteen-year old mother with a two- 
months baby in her arms, and her own 
mother, a youngish looking Italian woman 
nodded her head in ecstacy, and chattered 
in Italian to her two smaller children who 
were awed into silence by the double 
wonders of riding and gazing at real country. 

The young wife grew confidential as we 
drove. Before her marriage, a little over 
a year ago, her husband had been a trav- 
eler, a very great traveler, one who never 
stopped in one place longer than was neces- 
sary to pick up a little change by splitting 
wood or cutting grass. But now he was 
a steady driver of a wagon and brought to 
her his three-dollars-a-day wages at the 
end of each week. "But of course," she 
said, "it's up to me to give him two dollars 
once in a while to have a good time with." 

As we rode rapidly through the country 
we created a slight breeze on this hot Aug- 
ust day, and the pink chiffon waist worn 
by the mother of the girl-wife fluttered in 
the wind. The woman touched this gar- 
ment affectionately and said something to 
her daughter in Italian. "She says," de- 
ll 14] 



Twenty-Five Bouquets 

clared the girl, translating for my benefit, 
"that when she has seen women driving she 
has often admired the way in which their 
waists blew in the breeze, and now her 
waist is blowing just as theirs did." 

And then later came the bouquets. 
What were rides and coffee compared to 
flowers! Could Joey have a bunch? and 
Mina? and Margherita? and could they 
take one home to a sick sister? Oh, 
yes, they were happy over the flowers, but 
then they had been happy before the 
flowers came, they were always happy. 
Even the jaded mother in a green net waist 
with an imbecile boy at her knee, and an 
infant in her arms who looked as mindless 
as his brother, she was happy, and the 
mother of the child who screamed perpet- 
ually, and the one who had twins with her, 
and heaven knows how many at home were 
all happy. In fact there seemed to be no 
dark spirits among them, and as I listened 
to their cheerful talk and laughter, and 
remembered the delight of my fellow-riders 
I said to myself, after all I am the one who 
has received the twenty - five bouquets, 
twenty - five bouquets of the uncultured 
blossoms. 



[115] 




The Great Adventure 

HEY were sitting together over 
their knitting, these women of 
elegant and intellectual leisure, 
and dropping silently into a 
vacant porch rocker I caught the threads 
of their conversation and learned that they 
were discussing a recent sea disaster. They 
expressed their admiration of the way in 
which many of the victims of this calamity 
met death, and wondered what they would 
have done in a similiar situation. 

'Tm sure I should have been a craven 
coward," declared a knitter of a large gray 
sock, "and have spent my last moments in 
undignified waitings and denouncing of 
fate." 

"Do you really think it was fate?" ques- 
tioned a frail looking knitter of a stout 
sweater, "do you believe, as Emerson has 
said, that each soul contains from the be- 
ginning the event that shall befall it?" 

"How awful," exclaimed another knitter, 
"and who reads Emerson these days?" 

"I think it would be better if we all read 
him more," said the Frail One, "he might 

[117] 



From Day to Day 

help us to understand some of these present 
horrors, and fortify us to meet them." 

"I shall never forget," remarked the 
hostess, as she fumbled about in her knit- 
ting bag for some lost treasure, "the way 
in which that theatrical manager, I have 
forgotten his name, met his fate on this ship, 
saying, just before the boat went down that 
one should not fear death, for after all it 
was the great adventure." 

"And there is no evil in life for him who 
realizes that death itself is no evil," quoted 
the Frail Knitter, "at least that is what 
Montaigne says, "and I have often felt as 
the theatrical manager did, for our earthly 
adventures are so terribly handicapped by 
the physical, and what Pater calls this 
painful ministry to the flesh has stood so 
much in the way of our terrestrial happiness, 
that it is a positive joy to remember that 
with the adventure of dissolution these 
'angry stains of life and action' will be 
removed, and our spirits may soar untram- 
meled." 

"And where will they soar to?" demanded 
the Knitter of the Gray Sock. 

"That's too big a question for me," pro- 
tested the Frail One, "perhaps they will 
soar only as far as the 'great store-house of 

[118] 



The Great x^dventure 

being' as Matthew Arnold calls it, and there 
await another incarnation." 

"And more physical handicaps?" ques- 
tioned the Knitter of the Gray Sock, "it 
seems to me that this would not be much of 
an adventure, and can anyone tell me what 
Arnold meant by 'a store-house of being?" 

No one seemed to know, but another 
voice was heard in quotation, "Well you 
know what George Meredith has said: that 
there is nothing the body suffers but what 
the soul may profit by." 

"Now isn't that absurd?" declared the 
Knitter of the Gray Sock, "as if our souls 
were not entirely submerged by our physical 
woes. I know that I for one am never so 
hateful and disagreeable as when I'm ill. 
I hate sickness — and old age, that's another 
of my horrors." 

"Oh there's no old age now," said the 
hostess, rising with some evident hospita- 
ble intent, "except among the very young; 
who was it that said we are oldest when we 
are born?" 

"I don't know," admitted the literary 
Frail One, "but I know that Compton 
Leith has said that for those who have ex- 
perienced joy and really know the meaning 
of life there shall be no sadness of surrender, 

[119] 



From Day to Day 

but that the ecstacy of endeavor shall be 
prolonged to the end. The tree of life, he 
says, shall not rust to dull hues, but flush 
to a swift splendour — I have forgotten the 
rest." 

"Well that's too much for me," admitted 
the Knitter of the Gray Sock, "but I sup- 
pose that is the way it was with that the- 
atrical manager, his life certainly flushed 
to a swift splendour. But really ladies, I feel 
like saying what Thoreau did to the minister 
who came in his last illness to talk to him 
about another life: 'one world at a time.' 
Let us take old age and death when they 
come, and in the meantime stick to our 
knitting." 

"Then you will not be sorry that tea has 
arrived," said the hostess as she helped a 
maid steer a tea-wagon into the midst of 
this little group. 

"Tea!"' exclaimed the Frail One under 
her breath to the knitter of the Gray Sock, 
"it's always tea." 

"Yes," was the answer, "tea is a part of 
the earthly adventure." 



[120] 



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